


you're so good to be a witness to my sounds

by clumsyhearts



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, a bit sad but that's okay, a happy ending if you squint, i pounded this out in the midst of my seasonal affective disorder slump, in which i am an idiot, kids struggle with mental health, post-john's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clumsyhearts/pseuds/clumsyhearts
Summary: The first winter she had known him –reallyknown him – was the winter he’d buried his last living relative, the winter he’d lived at her house for a month, the winter he’d lost all motivation, the winter he’d slept in her bed more frequently than she, the winter he’d needed to take off in order to recover....Gilbert struggles with his head. Anne's there, because she's the force that keeps him from collapsing in on himself like a dying star.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 15
Kudos: 172





	you're so good to be a witness to my sounds

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Christa Wells' _Frame the Clouds_ song that pretty much inspired this whole thing. Thanks also to my seasonal affective disorder, I guess.

_all the words, they are my fingers on a face_  
_all the words, looking for patterns in the shapes_  
_you’re so good to be a witness to my sounds_  
_try to frame the clouds_

...

Winters were the worst part of the year for him.

Most other times of the year, he was filled with light, brimming with knowledge, quick with wit and laughter that made the corners of her lips twitch upwards uncontrollably – but she knows that wintertime makes it so hard for him to feel like _Gilbert_ , and seeing him sink into this kind of depressive state saddens her. 

Before Anne had known him – _really_ known him – she’d been unused to season-changing mental illnesses, given that her anxiety disorder pretty much just peaks throughout the whole year. But watching him struggle winter after winter with depressive episodes and anxiety peaks that were truly unlike him had given her some sort of clarity into what he was feeling.

The first winter she had known him – _really_ known him – was the winter he’d buried his last living relative, the winter he’d lived at her house for a month, the winter he’d lost all motivation, the winter he’d slept in her bed more frequently than she, the winter he’d needed to take off in order to recover. It was their junior year, and she remembers more from the month he’d lived at her house than of any other time during the year.

The day of John Blythe’s funeral, when Marilla and Matthew had driven Gilbert and Anne up to the funeral home and Gilbert couldn’t even get out of the car without grasping onto Anne’s hand as if it was a last resort, was her first indication that something was not quite right. He was grieving, of course, but he struggled to even stand during the service, and, when he was meant to give a eulogy that he had spent hours preparing, he couldn’t choke out a single word before panicking. 

To Anne’s shock, she remembers, she’d been able to read his emotions as clearly as if they had been laid out on a table in front of her. She’d stood from her pew in the back of the room, ignoring Marilla’s soft hisses to retreat, and stood next to Gilbert, folding her hand over his, while he read as much as he could from the eulogy before squeezing her hand back and taking his seat once more. 

And when the Cuthberts, the priest, and the last remaining Blythe were the last to leave the church, he’d collapsed to his knees in front of Anne and buried his head into her stomach. As if he craved the kind of motherly reassurance that everything was going to be okay again, that his dad would come back –

Anne had simply sunk to her knees in front of him and offered him her open arms. 

He’d sobbed until he could no longer think, a catharsis upon the church floor, the last remaining sacrifice for John Blythe, and she’d just run her fingers through his hair and sang a hymn over and over again.

Neither John nor Gilbert had even wanted a funeral.

She had not noticed the utter silence of the rest of the church until much later, when she turned the memory over in her head as she tried to sleep, when in her dreams the only feeling on her fingertips was his scalp as she tried to massage him back to himself.

The month he had lived at her house, he’d managed to freeze the assets on his own house, keeping the deed to himself based on the fact that he had family friends to take over as his guardians, the newly minted LaCroixes. He’d admitted to her once, while they sat at the windowsill and watched a thick layer of snow fall over the three AM plains, that he wasn’t sure if he could ever step foot in his house again. 

She hadn’t said anything, only squeezed his hands in sadness.

Anne knew Marilla spoke frequently, in hushed tones, to Matthew, about her worry for Gilbert, about the fact that she didn’t mind that he stayed but she didn’t want him to hurt forever, about the possibility of sending him to Anne’s therapist, and Anne knew Gilbert heard because he just sighed. He’d written it all out, a letter on how he was feeling, and she’d read it and cried and read it and cried again and kept the letter somewhere in a trunk under her bed when she was frustrated with him.

One morning, late in the month, Gilbert had fallen asleep in her arms after a particularly harrowing anxiety attack. She’d been genuinely scared at his state after he’d awoken her with a shake and said “Anne, I think I might be having a heart attack.” 

She’d shoved him onto her bed and yanked him into her arms so fast he’d barely had time to process. His head flopped onto her shoulder. She squeezed his back against her chest and ducked her head into his neck, cheek to cheek. Physical contact was how he knew the world – how he gained his senses back after a particularly nasty episode. 

“Tell me a story,” he whispered, and she squeezed him so hard she feared she might have broken him and whispered story after story about John Blythe, about Green Gables, about Jane Eyre, about school, about Cole, about her life before Avonlea, until his head fell heavy against hers and he muttered “Thank you.” And then she knew she was crying because she tasted salt but she didn’t dare let go and he didn’t dare disentangle himself.

He fell asleep in her arms within minutes and this was how she knew to let go a little. She didn’t want to.

Marilla had found them both asleep, sprawled over each other, holding onto each other so tightly that it was impossible to tell who was comforting whom. She’d taken a picture. Anne did not find it until well after Gilbert had gone home.

Anne had woken first, and eased him back to the world of the conscious by running her hand through his hair, and when he’d opened his eyes he asked her to sing.

She couldn’t say no.

...

The second winter she’d known him – _really_ known him – he’d delved into his studies and his life without his father. He’d recovered, or was recovering, and after the first thaw, it had been hard to associate a smiling, joking, singing, _laughing_ Gilbert with the representation of grief and depression that she’d been well acquainted with that previous winter. He’d moved into his old house, Mary and Bash and baby Delphine in tow, and he’d fallen asleep in Anne’s arms again, but under much less strenuous circumstances.

But the first snow and the loss of daylight brings the morose, somber Gilbert back to her arms and her home. 

He was so exhausted, and so frequently so, that it was unsafe for him to drive anywhere, and considering that Anne and Gilbert lived on the parcels of farmland furthest from their town and school, it only made sense for her to drive him home. This is when he either fell asleep and breathed so softly that it broke her heart to wake him, or cried so softly that it broke her heart to let him cry.

 _Ten and two, ten and two,_ she could hear Marilla chiding her whenever she took her hand off the wheel to grasp his.

Once, she had gone inside his home with him to visit with Mary and Bash and Delphine, to find that Gilbert was no less silent at home than at school or anywhere else. The last time she’d seen him really alive was the night they had babysat for Delphine together, and the sun had been uncommonly shining, and he’d grinned at her with the left corner of his mouth creeping dangerously towards the smirk of the Gilbert she loved best, and she'd been so overwhelmed that she’d almost cried right there on the spot. 

Gilbert had gone upstairs to change out of his jeans, and Mary had asked Anne if she knew what was wrong with him, and Anne had been so relieved to know that it wasn’t _her_ that she began to sob in their kitchen. And while the two women comforted each other over their mutual worry, and Delly looked on, her incessant baby-chatter even stopping for this crucial moment, Gilbert had reappeared in the doorway and summoned the courage required to admit the truth to himself.

“I think I have seasonal affective disorder,” he’d whispered, and Anne and Mary and Gilbert had all collapsed to the floor together in a mosh pit of hands and warm breath and exclamations of love. And when Bash had come in, Gilbert started to cry again, and they’d all just meshed into one human that night, one human full of love and affection and support. Anne wasn’t even the receiving end of this support and she still felt loved, heard, accepted.

He’d started therapy after that. A week after his first appointment he was worse, and then even worse, but then he’d finally hit rock bottom. And he’d be damned if he wasn’t climbing his way out of his own grave.

And Anne had gone to pick him up to go to school and he’d actually smiled at her before clambering in the car and she’d burst out in tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, hands reaching out to touch her face, to wipe away _her_ tears for the first time in a long, _long_ time, and God, she’d missed the callouses of his fingertips so badly. Was that _possible_ , even, to miss someone’s fingertips?

“You’re smiling,” she grinned through her sobs, the sound coming out gargled and drunken.

He blinked at her, seriously, as if he were shoving back tears, and pressed his lips together. 

“You’re smiling,” she repeated as she threw her arms around his neck, and she heard his Adam’s apple bob repeatedly as he grappled with the weight of this. “Goddammit, it’s mid-February and you’re _smiling_."

They’re late to school.

When she pulls into the parking lot, he grabs her hand and says, “Thank you.”

Gilbert doesn’t have anything to thank her for, but she squeezes back anyways.

...

The third winter she’d known him – _really_ known him – they’d graduated, and he could only talk to her over the phone or over FaceTime, calling her from the prestigious dorms at Harvard. And she could only talk to him at night after she’d left work, nannying in the hopes of saving enough to take an accelerated course at a community college. And she misses him.

It’s better to know that he misses her, too.

She knows he’s overworking himself. She can tell by the way it takes him a second to smile when he picks up the video chats, by the dark circles under his eyes, by the messages he sends her late at night. But by all accounts, he’s been doing much better with his medication this year than she’s ever seen him in the winter.

“Sometimes the medications make me feel like somebody else,” Gilbert admits to her one night, voice soft with sleep over the phone while she climbs onto the subway to head home. Anne can’t see him this time – they’re just on the phone, her earbuds jammed into her ears after a long day at work – but she knows this is the Gilbert she loves best just by hearing his voice – she knows his hair is mussed, and his eyes are soft and focused, and his voice is just the right frequency to localize in her chest and reverberate in her ears. This is the Gilbert she debates with. This is the Gilbert she falls asleep to dumb movies with. This is the Gilbert she drove home from rugby matches and the SATs and academic competitions. 

This is the Gilbert that smiles at her with the crooked, wickedly deceitful, horrifyingly honest smile that he reserves just for her.

Selfishly, she’s jealous of all the pre-med students at Harvard that get to see the Gilbert she’s come to call her own in her favorite state, even though she knows she has no right to him except as his childhood best friend, and as the girl who would torch an entire world for the chance to see him smile one more time.

“Do they help, though?” Anne asks, gripping onto the rail of the subway as the doors hiss shut.

“Yeah,” Gilbert murmurs. “They help.” They’re both quiet for a few moments, and then he says, “Anne?”

“Yeah?”

“I know it’s selfish, but I really wish I was actually with you right now.”

“I wish you were here, too,” she whispers, and the tear that drips to the end of her crooked nose makes it sound much more tragical than it actually is, and all of a sudden she’s glad he can’t see her like this. 

When he’d come up to visit her on his winter break, she knew he was unwell, but somehow it didn’t matter to him because he was so ecstatic to see her that he wouldn’t let go of her – running his calloused fingertips over her face, braiding and unbraiding her hair into its customary single strand, pressing his cheek into her cheek as he hugged her from behind. 

Months of starvation from each other had reduced them to a state of coexistence so strong that Anne couldn’t bring herself to notice that they were sleeping together out of habit, falling asleep on the couch early in the morning in the middle of their fifth movie of the night with no other excuse than she couldn’t bring herself to admit how much she wanted from him and he couldn’t ask. And when they woke up, tangled in each other as usual, at least there was an excuse.

They could have shared her bed. If he had asked. If she had asked. If they had known.

Anne found that there were a lot of ifs when it came to Gilbert.

He didn’t have an anxiety attack, and nor did she, but he asked her to sing one morning when he woke anyways. 

She couldn’t say no. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me other places  
> on wattpad: [@ffairlyfloral](https://www.wattpad.com/user/ffairlyfloral)  
> on pinterest: [@ffairlyfloral](https://www.pinterest.com/ffairlyfloral/)  
> or right here on ao3: [@clumsyhearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clumsyhearts)


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